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Chris Hipkins is still the leader of the Labour Party, following a two-hour meeting with his new caucus.
National won 50 seats and the right-wing, free-market ACT Party won 11 at Saturday's general election, securing a majority of just one seat in the 121-seat parliament, according to provisional results from the Electoral Commission, and may need the help of NZ First.
Hipkins said this afternoon the caucus needed to take time to reflect properly on the result - the party saw a dramatic fall in support, with preliminary results showing Labour's share of the party vote has fallen by almost half.
"I still have a bit of fight left in me."
Support for Labour was always going to fall, after it reached never-before-seen heights in 2020. But the preliminary election results showed it had collapsed to just under 27 percent - bringing brutal consequences for Labour's caucus.
Twenty-one of the party's MPs lost their jobs on Saturday night - including former ministers Michael Wood and Nanaia Mahuta. Labour lost 27 electorates including strongholds Mount Roskill, New Lynn and West Coast-Tasman. All 14 of the safe National seats Labour flipped red in 2020 have gone back blue.
Earlier Hipkins said he would remain an MP for the full three-year term, telling reporters at Parliament he intended to continue representing Remutaka.
"I'm not done with politics yet.
"I've made the commitment to the people of my electorate each three years when I put my name forward that I'm committing to three years, and regardless of what role I play during that time, I owe that to my constituents who place their faith in me to be their local MP."
Following this afternoon's meeting, Hipkins again signalled he would serve the party as needed.
"I'm absolutely committed to supporting Labour into opposition and we have a job that we will need to do in opposition."
There were a number of people in the party he said he could easily see leading it in future.
Labour's constitution requires the party to vote on a leader within three months of an election loss, but Hipkins said that would not be scheduled until after the caucus was finalised.
"I indicated on Saturday that I was certainly not going to rush any decisions, and I don't expect the caucus to rush any decisions on the future either.
"I think we do need to take some time to make sure that we reflect properly on the election result, bearing in mind that we don't actually have the caucus confirmed."
He said Kelvin Davis was still deputy leader of the party.
The whole caucus of departing MPs and two newcomers met on Tuesday morning, while the much smaller group of MPs set to remain in opposition met in the afternoon.
Hipkins said a couple of senior MPs had talked to him about their own considerations about leaving, but he would leave it up to them to make those announcements "if that is what they want to do ... I'm not going to announce things on their behalf".
Former Labour leader Andrew Little announced today that he was retiring from politics.